George Pickens says Georgia practice was 'harder than the NFL'
Former Georgia wide receiver and current Pittsburgh Steelers star George Pickens had high praise for his former team and the way the program was run on Thursday. Pickens, in his first year in the NFL, said that he believes practices at Georgia were harder than those in the NFL because of the amount of talent he had to go up against each and every day on the Bulldog defense.
Taking a look at the kind of guys Pickens went up against throughout his career, he might be on to something. From last year’s 2021 unit alone there were five first round picks and eight players overall. That included a pair of defensive backs. The year before, four defensive backs were picked and another was signed as an undrafted free agent. That means that for the first two years of his collegiate career Pickens went up against half a dozen future NFL players each and every day (not even including those that weren’t yet draft eligible and will be picked in the years to come).
Pickens of course isn’t the first Georgia player to say something like this. Kirby Smart creates a culture of making practice harder than the games so that when adversity hits on the field, it’s not unfamiliar. One of Pickens’ former teammates and a fellow first year NFL player, Lewis Cine, said so during a podcast appearance this spring.
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“Hey, to be at Georgia, it’s tough. To be at Georgia, you have to practice hard. To be at Georgia, you have to earn it,” Smart said this season. “As long as they believe in doing that, we have enough talent that we’re going to have a good opportunity when we go out on the field on Saturday. But they have to believe in that culture.”
Pickens, a former five-star coming out of Hoover H.S. (Ala.) was named to the Coaches’ Freshman All-SEC Team in 2019 after leading Georgia in receiving with 49 catches for 727 yards and eight touchdowns. He followed that up in 2020 tying for the team-high with 36 catches for 513 yards and six touchdowns despite missing a pair of games. Both of those seasons featuring standout performances of 100 yards or more going for 12 catches and 175 yards in the Sugar Bowl against Baylor, five catches and 126 yards at Missouri and seven catches and 135 yards in the Peach Bowl versus Cincinnati. Pickens hauled in a pair of touchdown passes each year against Missouri before suffering a torn ACL the spring prior to his junior season. He would return and play a part in Georgia’s final four games of the year before being drafted by the Steelers in the second round. So far in his NFL career Pickens has lived up to the billing of his hype with 33 catches, 453 yards and two touchdowns on the season. He also has a rushing score. Pickens and the Steelers take on the Indianapolis Colts this Monday night at 8:15 p.m. ET on ESPN.
